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Sometime in the past fifty years NASA became paralyzed not by budget cuts, but by political in-fighting, fractured organizational structure and lots and lots of
by skriticos2 12y ago
Sometime in the past fifty years NASA became paralyzed not by budget cuts, but by political in-fighting, fractured organizational structure and lots and lots of red tape. And then there is all that pork that goes around with the entrenched contractors. The tale of the last Mars program that NASA put together is a great example of this. They got handed a technically sound plan to get there in reasonable time with reasonable resources. Then every org-unit in NASA wanted to add their own part to stay relevant and it got so bloated both technically and financially that it had to be put to rest.
So unless they convince me that they managed to get their internal structural problems under control, I don't think they get anytime to Mars within this century. And certainly not before the private sector does.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program
p.s.: There is a free movie on YouTube telling the tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTZvNLL0-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTZvNLL0-w
- higherpurpose 12y agoI'm definitely expecting the private sector to do it at least a decade before NASA does it.
- bduerst 12y agoI'm curious why people think it will happen in the private sector first. Is there some applied science, resource, tourism, or other value to be had? We haven't seen a private sector moon landing yet (it's been 50 years since NASA did it) simply because there isn't much market value in putting a person on the moon. So why Mars?
- cschmidt 12y agoI suppose because Elon Musk wants to go there, and he seems good at getting stuff done.
- 14113 12y agoThis comment really sums up the cult of personality that's grown up around Musk.
- ryandvm 12y agoBuilding a better car has an expected return on investment. So far nobody is able to come up with a way to recoup the many hundreds of millions of dollars it will cost to get humans to Mars and back.
- cecilpl 12y agoIt's entirely possible that Elon Musk doesn't care about recouping his investment in SpaceX. It seems like the end goal of the company is to start a colony on Mars so he can go live there.
- jack-r-abbit 12y agoQ: "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" - unknown A: "Because it's there" - George Mallory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory)
- Retra 12y ago
- danielweber 12y agoThe private sector will be selling the trips to Mars because they will make money. The people buying the trips will not be making money. It will be consumption, not investment.
- BrainInAJar 12y agoI doubt it, the private sector only innovates if there's enough & immediate enough profit on the line. Even the libertarian darling SpaceX is just piggybacking off the research and hard work of the public sector (ie, NASA's work in the 50's -> 80's)
- ubernostrum 12y agoBecause private-sector corporations never have problems with every manager wanting to add something to justify his/her budget and existence, resulting in a bloated over-budget under-delivered project.
- anigbrowl 12y agoUpside: you could end up owning your own goddamn planet! Downside: you can't do anything with it. You're not going to make the staggering costs back in space tourism, notwithstanding geeks' relatively high risk tolerance; you need the possibility of some self-sustaining economic activity.
- efuquen 12y agoWhat exactly is the incentive for the private sector to go to Mars? Going back as far as the colonization of the New World, high risk and expensive exploration has traditionally been funded by governments. Maybe when I a see private sector company at least get a human into LEO, let alone get someone to the Moon, we can start talking about whether they'll be able to pull off a Mars mission.
- Houshalter 12y agoWhat exactly is the incentive for anyone to go to mars?
- XJOKOLAT 12y ago"Because it's there" - George Mallory
- cryptoz 12y agoWell, that will differ from person to person. My personal incentive to go to Mars is that I want to study its atmosphere, help modify it to become denser and warmer, to be friendlier to life. Others will have different incentives to go, I imagine.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoMonetarily? No benefits, or even negative benefit. Not unless the research leads to the ability to capture one of the thousands of asteroids which contain an upwards of $1 trillion in minerals. A better question is probably, "What will the consequences be if we limit ourselves to Earth?"
- finid 12y ago> What will the consequences be if we limit ourselves to Earth? Very good question, man. At the rate we're going, both at the rate we're reproducing and the rate we're (mis)using what this planet still has to offer, we better start looking for another location.
- 12y ago
- Arjuna 12y agoTo add to the discussion... according to the briefing, they believe that all of the technologies required for a human mission to Mars are 15 years away, assuming that all technologies are fully tested. This puts an approximate time-line near 2030 [1]. Question from Scott Powers, The Orlando Sentinel: "The technologies you talked about that are still a long ways from being fully developed, the EDL [2], the propellant and communications. Do you have a sense for what kind of time tables we're talking about, to get those to the point where they'll be able to be used in manned missions?" Answer from Dr. James Reuther [3]: "[...] To get all the way to the point where we are able to put 10 metric tons, 10 times what we can do today, to the surface or greater, which is what's really required for a human mission, is probably going to take until the beginning of 2030 before we have all of those technologies in hand, ready to go at that scale. And, that means that they're fully demonstrated and ready for that kind of mission." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU#t=2304 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU#t=2304 [2] Entry, Descent and Landing [3] http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/about_us/bios/reuther_bio.html http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/about_us/bios/reu...
- danielweber 12y ago"15 years to launch" means it isn't happening. I would love a Mars mission, but this isn't it.
- arjie 12y agoThe moon mission was 9 years to launch.
- danielweber 12y agoAnd that was very close to the deadline. By the time Nixon was in office, Apollo 8 had already orbited the Moon and Apollo 9 was less than 2 months away. No administration is going to carry the water to push along a rival administration's space program that's only ¼ complete.
- Retra 12y agoThe moon is also much closer than mars.
- waterlesscloud 12y agoI want to see a concrete plan. Dates on a calendar. Milestones and targets. I want to be able to sit down and spend a weekend reading the step-by-step book-sized roadmap. As far as I'm aware, there's not even a project name. NASA is not going to put a human on Mars in the 2030s. I simply don't believe them anymore.
- androidb 12y agoIn all honesty, I saw an #Onion tag at the end of the tweet and I thought it's a story made by the onion - had to read twice to see it's Orion, though it has more credibility with my first interpretation.
- LyndsySimon 12y agoIt upsets me that NASA is reusing "Orion". It's another, very cool project using nuclear bombs as propulsion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
- hackuser 12y ago> political in-fighting, fractured organizational structure and lots and lots of red tape. These things happen in private sector organizations too; the assumption that the private sector somehow will do it better needs to be supported. Really, we need to point to a specific private sector organization. Name every place in the solar system where NASA missions currently are located. Outside the solar system? Where they have gone historically? Their achievements are staggering; history-making events are routine; they are by far the greatest explorers in the history of humanity. Certainly they aren't perfect and every organization can improve, but they do pretty well.
- humanrebar 12y ago> the assumption that the private sector somehow will do it better needs to be supported Well, the assumption is that a healthy private sector can't support itself with coercion(1), so if a private organization fails too much it changes its direction or ceases to exist. Also, you can disrupt private initiative peacefully, but disrupting the government is usually a pretty drastic action that costs a lot of resources, even lives. (1) There are unfair practices in the private sector like monopolies and fraud... which are at least nominally against the rules in liberal democracies. If we allow that the government fails to enforce its rules, I'm not sure why we're confident about its ability to execute in other areas.
- hackuser 12y ago> the assumption is that a healthy private sector can't support itself with coercion(1), so if a private organization fails too much it changes its direction or ceases to exist. Also, you can disrupt private initiative peacefully, but disrupting the government is usually a pretty drastic action that costs a lot of resources, even lives. I think it's the opposite: We disrupt government every 2 years by firing various leaders; every 4-8 years we replace the entire executive leadership. If a government leader fails to often, they change their direction (as many politicians do!) or lose their job.
- humanrebar 12y ago
- DINKDINK 12y agoWhy would the private market want to go to Mars? I can't think of a convincing reason, other than say maybe tourism
- wcoenen 12y agoSpaceX was created to get to Mars. Elon Musk's reason is simply that he wants humans to be an interplanetary species. [1] [1] http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-interview-1212 http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-int...
- at-fates-hands 12y ago>>> NASA became paralyzed not by budget cuts, but by political in-fighting, fractured organizational structure and lots and lots of red tape. My best friend's dad was a NASA scientist for almost 30 years. By the time the 90's rolled around and in the post Challenger era, he used to tell us neighborhood kids the same stories. He finally retired in the early 1990's when budget cuts, in-fighting and the struggle to remain relevant were just too much for him to take. He' still bitter to this day about how he felt politicians ruined the agency.
- 3327 12y agoLove NASA but we heard this tune many times. If only 'we are going to Mars' actually took us there. NASA is not even close... Not with this budget not with the current brain drain, and 1970's style management.
- ryanmk 12y agoYou don't think they'll put humans on Mars within this century? Really? That's not a conservative statement. A conservative statement is, yea we'll probably get to Mars this century, but maybe not in the next 20 years.
- tanglesome 12y agoI worked for NASA, the budget cuts alone helped bring it to where it is today. In the 1980s, we were still using technology from the 1950s because we couldn't afford to replace it. Things have only gotten worse since then.
- einhverfr 12y agoIt's not just that. The difficulties in sending a human to Mars and safely returning him/her are way beyond anything we have ever tried. It wouldn't be that bad to send a human to, say, Phobos, but Mars poses some extra problems, not the least of which is how to land. An atmosphere too thick for retro rockets and too thin for parachutes is a major impediment. So until I start seeing progress on those issues, I will see this just as sci-fi.
- randyrand 12y agoWhy would the private sector want to send humans to mars? Scratch that, why does NASA want to send humans to mars? Just because we can? Anyone know?
- DyslexicAtheist 12y ago@skriticos2: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141203050450-7082046-we-re-sending-humans-to-mars https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141203050450-7...
- domrdy 12y agoI really enjoyed watching the movie. Always amazes me how dedicated some people like Robert Zubrin are towards their goals.
- lerouxb 12y agoHave you read anything about what's been happening at Microsoft? I don't think that private organisations are necessarily better.